Things That Make You Ask, "How Stupid Are You?"

7/28/26 channel 2 Boise:

"BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — Boise Police officers were dispatched on July 23 to a report of a dog locked in the back of a U-Haul moving truck around 6:05 p.m.

"Police report the outside temperature at that time was around 98-degrees. Responding officers made contact with the caller, and inspected the truck. One officer could hear heavy panting from within the back of the moving truck and determined the conditions were too dangerous, ultimately deciding to force open the back of the truck."

Moving is hard. But is there anyone that does not get the hazard of this to an animal?

Speech Therapy is Helping

A variety of exercises is making my speech clearer and less exhausting; the globus sensation is almost gone. This is nice because I will be speaking at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Dallas in late September. I have been polishing my PowerPoint and rehearsing endlessly until it is so easy that I do not get nervous and try speeding my way through.

Chant With Me: "What Do We Want? Common Sense Knife Control! When Do We Want It? Now!"

7/26/26 Daily Mail:

A beloved California art gallery manager who was writing an illustrated children's book has been stabbed to death in broad daylight. 

Rachell Summers, 73, was stabbed 11 times outside Capitola Mall in Santa Cruz County on Monday in what investigators have called a random act of violence.

Tyler Leibelt, 19, has been charged with murder while lying in wait and using a deadly weapon, court records show. He has not entered a plea. ...

Leibelt ran up to Summers outside the mall and stabbed her from behind, the court document said.

Summers was 'stabbed multiple times in her back, defensive stab wounds to her forearms, and stab wounds to her center chest, more than 11 total,' prosecutors alleged in the filing.

The 19-year-old ran into the mall, leaving a trail of the grandmother's blood behind him. Prosecutors say he also discarded a knife....

Leibelt told police that 'he purchased two knives so that he could hold one in each hand as he was killing someone,' the court filing says. 

He gestured stabbing with both of his hands during the interview with investigators.

Investigators have found nothing to suggest that Leibelt knew Summers before he targeted her in the deadly attack. It is also unclear why he chose her as his victim.

Leibelt told police that he had been suffering from 'homicidal fantasies for awhile' and claimed he had 'previously disclosed these fantasies but he 'kept getting let out' of custody,' according to the filing.

Prosecutors noted that a gun violence restraining order was issued against the alleged killer in November last year. 

He allegedly told sheriff's deputies during that incident that he 'expressed a desire to cause a mass casualty event,' the court document said.

He also allegedly 'wrote a goodbye letter expressing a desire to kill as many people as possible.' [emphasis added]

Gun violence restraining orders make us so safe--from gun violence. Those other methods for murdering people are so much nicer. 

Released from custody. Police should have requested an involuntary commitment order until California Welfare and Institutions Code sec. 5250.

A Fascinating Book: Tamed

Alice Roberts. Tamed: From Wikd to Domesticated, the Ten Animals and Plants That Changed Human History.

This is a popular history of the domestication of the animals and plants that to a large extent created our civilization. My wife found it interesting but not as well written as her English Composition teaching standards required. Yes, there are areas where I found the structure less than satisfying but it tells stories so interesting that I can forgive some minor issues.

If I fault this book for anything, it is that for many of these stories, it recounts the early attempts to understand the domestication process, then the later attempts, and now today’s theories.  While that development process has a certain detective story interest to it, it is far less satisfying to me and much wordier than just presenting current theory. 

Since I teach Western Civilization, these domestication events are of great importance. There is a bit of wit and humor scattered through the book, although not as thoroughly entertaining as Mary Roach's similar popular science books.

One surprising deficiency, since the author is a professor is that the lack of either traditional footnotes or endnotes. The bibliography is detailed, but if i am curious about one little detail, I should not need to read through a dozen books and journal articles to find it.

The chapter on humans i thought might examine the futile attempts of eugenics but it is an examination of how for a variety of reasons, humans have changed genetically in ways that have tamed us, making us more able to get along with each other.  Also along discussion of why GMO is the Island of Dr. Moreau disaster that many Greens assume but of course it turns into evil greedy corporations cannot be trusted with this, only the selfless universities and other nonprofits. 

Choose One

1. LGBTWTF making a spectacle of themselves. 

2. Muslim immigrants. 

6/26/26 AP:

BERLIN (AP) — A van ramming and stabbing near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and many others injured is believed to have been an Islamic extremist terror attack, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday.

The suspect in Saturday night’s attack remains at large. Authorities issued a wanted notice and warned people against approaching Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, saying that he may be armed and dangerous. 

Authorities said he is believed to have injured several people with a van in a park near the Pride festival’s closing party. Several people were also apparently stabbed.

One I find annoying. The other is a public safety problem. I do hope Queers for Palestine sees this in their newsfeed.

I Am Going to Miss My Forest

Although the new house has even more forest, some of it hickory. I am not yet sure if this the species with edible nuts.

Magic Cushion

 I mentioned a few weeks back that the seats in my CT5 were too painful for my wife to sit in for even short periods. (Her 2022 Hyundai Tucson Limited is only slightly longer until pain becomes unbearable.) The rather stiff bolsters cause her great pain. After many experiments ordering and returning cushions to Amazon, we found one that she can comfortably both ride and drive with.

Amazon.com: C CUSHION LAB Patented Pressure Relief Seat Cushion for Long Sitting Hours on Office/Home Chair, Car, Wheelchair - Extra-Dense Memory Foam for Hip, Tailbone, Coccyx, Sciatica - Light Grey : Office Products

Buy C CUSHION LAB Patented Pressure Relief Seat Cushion for Long Sitting Hours on Office/Home Chair, Car, Wheelchair - Extra-Dense Memory Foam for Hip, Tailbone, Coccyx, Sciatica - Light Grey: Back & Seat Cushions - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

amzn.to

200 Motels and Buckaroo Banzai in the Fifth Dimension Now Seem Rational and Normal

 Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022). The girlfriend who dragged me off to watch 200 Motels whispered in my confused ear part-way through, "It makes more sense if you take acid first." No, thank you. This movie might be similarly enhanced by LSD. Or perhaps permanent insanity lies that way. It was visually stunning. There is a almost incomprehensible plot involving travel between different universes. Amazing kung fu sequences, too. You will never watch Ratatouille (2007) the same way again.

A movie that I just watched and very much enjoyed was The Sheep Detectives (2026). If you liked Babe (1995), and Chicken Run (2000), you will like this. Not giving away much: shepherd reads murder mysteries to his flock in the evenings. After his murder, his flock uses what they have learned to find the killer.

The Dead Not Only Vote...

They also cash checks.  7/21/26 New York Post:

The Treasury Department has blocked nearly $100 million in taxpayer money from going to dead people since implementing a government-wide payment verification process last year, The Post has learned. 

The department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service discovered the money set to go to ghosts after a review of an eye-popping 885 million payments worth a total of nearly $2.7 trillion.

Weird Al

 I have always enjoyed his music. Seeing this 6/23/26 Variety article makes me respect him more. He explained that he was offered seven figures to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival:

"But I’m doing enough that I don’t need to take any amount of money if it makes me feel icky, and that kind of did.”

Saudi Arabia is slowly inching towards the 16th century. It still needs to sign the Abraham Accords and treat women as equals. 

Boxes

I found that Home Depot's Heavy Duty Large was big enough for the absurdly large Canon PRO-300 and a much more modest Canon MG2522 with lots of bubble wrap. We are almost done packing and I will be glad to be done 

Real Unobvious

7/23/26 ABC News:

According to victim and witness statements, the suspect yelled "Allahu Akbar" during both attacks, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The NYPD is currently evaluating whether this is a potential hate crime, she said....

While the perpetrator has no known mental health history with the NYPD, the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor, the commissioner said.

Google Earth is Amazing

 

California Switchblade Law

 Knife Rights v. Bonta (9th Cir. 2026). This being the 9th Circuit, they upheld California's ban on concealed carry of switchblade knives. I am disappointed that I was not asked to provide expert declarations or rebut the other side's expert declarations. I am not sure how much difference it would have made. At the core of this decision is the concept of how and why:

In assessing whether a law is "relevantly similar under the Second Amendment," courts are instructed to compare modern and historical regulations in terms of "how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen's right to armed self-defense."...

Other states and territories continued to adopt concealed carry restrictions on Bowie knives and other dangerous knives and weapons during and after the Civil War. These states punished unlawful concealed carry with imprisonment, fines, or both.^[10] In addition, the record includes prohibitions on the concealed carry of knives from several cities in the post-Civil War period.^[11]

The record also includes evidence as to why jurisdictions prohibited the concealed carry of Bowie knives and other knives. One of California's experts, Dr. Robert Spitzer, explained that "Bowie knives were widely used in fights and duels," and were known to be "fighting knives" intended for "[interpersonal] combat." Another expert, Dr. Brennan Rivas, explained that "[a]s rates of violence rose during the nineteenth century, people were more likely to carry and use large knives; the increased presence of knives . . . had the regrettable consequence of exacerbating the problem." This problem was "especially notable in southern areas, where Bowie knives were quite common and known to be associated with needless bloodshed." 

The problem here is why those laws were adopted. The decision acknowledges that these laws adopted in the 1950s because of criminal use.(Perhaps largely in West Side Story.) The why for the antebellum period was not members of the criminal class but the people who would become legislators, judges, and militia officers. My book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic examines this odd situation in more detail.

 

It Is Always Good to Introspect

 I am planning disaster against this people,

from which you cannot save yourselves.
You will no longer walk proudly,
for it will be a time of calamity.
In that day people will ridicule you;
they will taunt you with this mournful song:
"We are utterly ruined;
my people’s possession is divided up.
He takes it from me!
He assigns our fields to traitors."
Therefore you will have no one in the assembly of the Lord
To divide the land by lot." (2:3-5)

What goes around comes around: You defraud your fellow Israelites out of land with no remorse. "Your" (you took it from the poor) land will now be taken from you. Who will do this? The Assyrians. You will be as to them what the poor has been to you.

God is warning His people that their callous injustice has blinded them to the storm clouds that are gathering around them. They are so busy scheming that they do not see nor care that there are other people who are scheming against them.

There is a message here for many. Steal from the taxpayers and do not be surprised when it is taken back. Ignore the legitimate needs of those in whose names those frauds took place and it will not go well for you. 

I Knew the Date Seemed Important

A high point of Western Civilization, America, and Humanity.  Another reminder of the importance of metric system.

Lost Keys

I misplaced the keys that hold the roof rail crossbars on my wife's Hyundai. I eas planning to pay a locksmith to fit keys for them.

It was not an opium dream but a dream nonetheless revealed their location.

In Hyundai Tucson glove box, a stately key set i did find.

Clearly a Big Market for This Degree

7/16/26 Campus Reform:

Northeastern Illinois gender studies major enrolls just 4 students

I wonder what it costs taxpayers to fund a no-demand major.

Shipping Boxes

The next time you buy something expensive that comes in a custom box, save that box! We are trying to pack some expensive, oddly-shaped items: HP LaserJet, Canon PRO-300. If you put them in a box that is wide enough, it is likely so tall that any weight on top will crush the box down.  You do not want anything heavy in the box on top of the printer.  If you put anything soft on top of the printer, it needs to be compressible enough to absorb weight without transferring it to the printer. 

Monitors, at least are standard sizes and shapes. Boxes for them are surprisingly expensive, especially when you get the 33" monsters that I have on my desk.  The 65" TV seems to not be a common moving box size.

We have historically discarded these boxes because of storage space.  Next time, I will find space. 

Heavy duty foam for padding around printers in boxes is available from U-Haul and UPS.

Home Depot has a double wall box that just about exactly fits the Canon PRO-300.

Don't Judge Someone by "Their Worst Day"

 7/15/26 KTSP:

Gov. Tim Walz is defending his vote to pardon a man convicted of molesting a 10-year-old child more than 20 years ago.

Last week, the Trump administration deported Tou Lue Vang despite a pardon approved by Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson in their role on the Board of Pardons...

Walz questioned whether Vang’s removal improved outcomes in Minnesota.

“I guess the question I would as is, did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?” Walz said.

I think Walz just had his "worst day." 

Vang defended his multi year molestation of a 10-year-old as part of his culture.  

The Butcher's Tale

By Helmut Walser Smith. This is what historians call "post hole history." To say that is a very deep dive is an understatement. The sources are interrogations, court transcripts, and census records associated with Konitz, a small town in what was then German East Prussia. 

The crime was horrendous: an 18-year-old boy was suffocated or strangled and then dismembered expertly and wrapped and tied as though he was coming from a butcher. Bad enough, but rapidly this turned in the popular imagination of the town into a Jewish sacrifice of a Christian for blood to make matzohs. Antisemitic journalists soon arrived to throw liquid oxygen on a gasoline fire. 

This book examines not only the crime itself but how the assumptions of the locals spun this positively medieval blood libel into a widely believed story. While some local prosecutors pursued the blood libel idea, responsible aristocrats and bureaucrats recognized it as an absurd claim and provided troops to protect Konitz's Jewish community when local police were overwhelmed by numbers. Amazingly enough, it did not turn into a pogrom.

He examines in detail the underlying questions of how neighbors turn against neighbors and why the blood libel persisted into remarkably recent times in Europe, in spite of strong papal opposition.  Much of this discussion is not spectacularly interesting to me, but as detective story, it works well. 

Fortunately, Democrats are looking for other ways to demonize the Jews; blood libel is even too much for MSNOW.

New Jersey Assault Weapon & >10 Round Magazine Ban Overturned by 3rd Circuit

3rd Circuit heard an appeal by New Jersey to a district court ruling that the Second Amendment protects AR-15s but not LCMs (magazines greater than ten rounds). To my shock and pleasure they broadened the ruling to protect all the militia appropriate firearms as well as the LCMs. And yes, this is a case on which i worked. 

My Wife Was Skeptical of the View From Our Yard

 So I asked Google Earth:

Pool in New House

 

Buyer For Caldwell House Finally

I was hoping to close here before close on new house but it will only be a week or two of short-term financing.

I Took The Girls For Their First Ride in the Cadillac (Driving Miss Rosie)

This got scrambled first time. A potential, and eventually actual buyer, wanted to see the house and Mom's Taxi was not home, so I loaded our Springer Spaniels in the back seat and away we went. Lillie tried to climb into the front seat, but I explained that she could not drive and she lay down in the back. Both girls calmed down and saw quietly in the back seat, without sedatives, sometimes looking out the window. I explained to my wife that Rosie and I could split driving shifts.  She was not convinced. The first prairie dog or pronghorn antelope along the road and we would driving after it.

The more I drive my CT5, the more impressed I get with the electronics. The SuperCruise lane change capacity at first disappointed me. I turn the turn signal on and I have to turn it off after the lane change completes. 

A few weeks back, I watched a YouTube video about features present in many cars that are not explicitly in the manuals and are very nice. One is that on many cars, if you turn the turn signal stalk just a little, it turns on the blinker just long enough to warn those in that lane, "I'm coming over." (In the 1960s, I repaired the blinkers on my 1964 Chevy Malibu wagon, and saw the very curious mechanism to implement that in plastic, without electronics.)

So I did the brief warning mode. SuperCruise did the lane change with no need to turn off the blinker. Very nice. It also will do uncommanded lane changes to get around road hogs. I do not understand how it makes this decision but it is possible to tell it to not make uncommanded right lane changes,  I have never seen it make a dangerous decision on this.

Bizarre Reasoning Screaming for Cert

 Barnett v. Raoul Nos. 24-3060, 24-3061, 24-3062 & 24-3063.(6th Cir. 2026). Curiously:

Contrary to the dissenting opinion's efforts (often without citation) to conclusively link Bowie knives to criminality, however, Bowie knives were both widespread and used for lawful purposes. One expert in the history of arms in America, for example, explained that in the nineteenth century, "European visitors who ventured beyond the Appalachians found [the Bowie knife] such an integral part of the American way of life that they felt compelled to comment on it at length in accounts of their adventures.... In many communities, no man, whether hunter, gambler, tradesman or political leader felt himself fully clothed without one." Peterson, supra, at 25. Similarly, the historian who (literally) wrote the book on Bowie knives noted they were "widely carried by Americans of all stripes"; "served everyone equally, upstanding citizens and villains" alike; were "wide[ly] popular[], in the North and South" during the Civil War; and were "common[]"—"a weapon carried by men of all walks of life." Norm Flayderman, The Bowie Knife: Unsheathing an American Legend 20, 125, 130 (2004). Other scholars agree. See David B. Kopel, Clayton E. Cramer & Joseph Edward Olson, Knives and the Second Amendment, 47 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 167, 184 (2013) ("During the nineteenth century, Bowie knives were commonly present in many areas of the United States. Contemporary sources leave no question that Bowie knives, Arkansas Toothpicks, and similar knives were a common part of American life until well after the Civil War....").

The test that Heller imposed recognized that arms in common use are protected. Their dangerousness did not matter; their commonness did matter.

New York Must Accept Concealed Carry License Applications from Non-Residents

Higbie v. James, 795 F.Supp.3d 307 (2025) directs New York State to accept applications for concealed carry licenses from non-residents. This is not surprising: Hoffman v. Bonta imposed a similar requirement on California.  Some counties there are already doing so.

The decision refused to require New York to recognize licenses from other states. This is unfortunate because the license process is slow and costly in these states. It may take a few more cudgelings by the Court. 

I Saw This And I Found It Completely Plausible

This means it probably should be evaluated for accuracy.

Subsidies mean more money chasing same pile of goods or services. 

Final Negotiations for House Repair Complete

We negotiated the price down $2000 to cover some important repairs that the selkers are too strapped to pay for. We have a number of ambitious renovation plans to bring it into the 21st century which we can afford to do.

We leave on August 4th and become Tennesseans August 12th.

Carrying on Public Transit

Certain governments seek to maximize terror and murders. One strategy is to prohibit concealed carry licensees from carrying on public transit systems.  Angelo v. District of Columbia challenged this ban. The district court denied that these licensees had standing to challenge the district's law. The D.C. Court of Appeals reversed that decision:

Otherwise, because the pistol owners have alleged a pocketbook injury that is caused by their compliance with an allegedly unconstitutional criminal statute, we reverse and remand the case for additional proceedings.

Most of this decision is about decisions concerning whether the economic injuries suffered by the ban qualify them to sue. At district court, the plaintiffs also need to raise a Second Amendment challenge. In the Framing Era "sensitive places" did not include either public transit (there was none) or private transit. In various cases in which I have worked, their side has attempted to argue that post-Civil War railroads prohibited private possession of firearms. Their evidence has been either weak or non-existent. Railroads often required long guns to be checked. (People were going west to hunt.)

Memories of Being a Cool Kid

Remember these?

All the cool kids listened to these after 8-track went the way of the buffalo.  There were pre-recorded ones made very cheaply and short-lived. Or if you had the most minimal of technical know-how, you recorded from your turntable onto a cassette tape deck for your car. 

I had one of the highly hyped Pioneer AM/FM/Cassette decks in several of my silly cars as a young adult: 1977 Chevy Nova; 1978 Camaro Z28; 1979 Pontiac Grand Am.

The case was 1970s cool also:

Making a 1970s period piece? Let me know or in the trash it goes.

When They Are Not Banging the Drum for Fascism, The Old Gray Lady Can Do Journalism

 7/8/26 New York Times (behind a paywall; use Open in Private Window):

They told him that he was “the guy.”

Last July, in a small town in coastal Maine, a couple of progressive, self-styled recruiters of economic populists showed up at the blue-shingled house of Graham Platner, a little-known oyster farmer and Marine veteran who lived largely off government benefits.

They knew his name from local labor organizers and activists, and they had watched a video on the internet of him talking about oysters. Struck by his left-leaning ideology, his working-class affect and his gravelly voice, they became convinced that he could win a Senate seat in Maine — and quickly persuaded Mr. Platner of the same.

The initial headhunters, Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan, and then a third out-of-state operative they called up to Maine — Morris Katz — told Mr. Platner he was “the one,” a “hero of the movement,” “a historical figure” who could be “leading a revolution,” according to half a dozen people with knowledge of their conversations.

But a clutch of people who cared about Mr. Platner were telling him something else. They worried about his mental health, amid his ongoing efforts to heal from post-traumatic stress disorder after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They feared this trio of out-of-state operatives was a dangerous combination of inexperienced and overconfident. The worst-case scenario, they thought, wasn’t running for Senate and losing — it was destroying the life he worked hard to build.

It is a very detailed, pull-no-punches account of the left picked and then stood by a Nazi-tattooed, misogynist, kinky (discussing how he would rape an intruder in a dominant, "not gay sort of way"), alleged rapist when any rational political party would have backed away and insisted that he was a Republican dirty trick.

Packing Ourselves

Trying to find a company to pack our stuff in a professional manner was too hard. We have enough time to pack ourselves. I have started on the telescopes. The 17.5"v Dobsonian looks impossible but is a half-Serrurier truss design so it can be broken down to four 24x24 boxes.

My wife is helping me get everything bubble wrapped for safe transit.

Arizona Hot Tomorrow

 It will be 113 Thursday. Un like 1994 when Lake Havasu had 128.

Cute

On an SUV:

Emotional Support Vehicle 

Court Grants Cert on Assault Weapons Cases

6/30/26 Guardian:

The US supreme court will consider whether bans on AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic firearms are constitutional.

The justices said on Tuesday they will hear appeals challenging bans in Connecticut and the Chicago area in the next term.

There have been enough statements by both pro- and anti-gun justices to expect these laws to collapse.

"We Fought a War for This?"

Our dogs are losing their sanity from the fireworks." In the closing years of the 19th century, cynics begin to make fun of the solemn speeches associated with the Fourth. I would like more of that and less of this.

Watching John Adams With My Wife

Really well done. Yes, I have to make little corrections because I have read Adams' defense of the Boston Massacre soldiers and see how the screenplay oversimplified it and left out the RKBA lines, but hey, being married to an historian is hard.

Moving is So Much Fun

We were going to use UPack to get our stuff cross-country.  We are not inclined to pack and load ourselves but UPack has an affiliated business that provides local pack and load services. 

I made a reservation with them. They do not bring or supply boxes, tape, or moving blankets to protect your furniture. So how many boxes will I need? I really do not want to buy 100 boxes and they only use 80. This is not something that I would expect professional movers to do, and yet this is a local moving company. 

SuperGrok thinks the full service movers can do it for about $15,000 (no appliances, 300 pound gun safe, not heavy but oddly shaped telescopes). I am getting estimates this next week. If it comes into that price range, it is only a few thousand more than UPack and whatever the local pack and load service would cost. 

Frustrations

The initial burst of showings of our Caldwell house had trickled down. I hope this is because of 4th of July.

That the first offer fell through because they were not really looking to buy a house was odd, but several realtors now have told of people who finally admitted (in one case after wasting 18 months of her time) that they could not buy a home. They just liked shopping.

Record Heat!

 Actually, no. This is the data on record high temperatures by state and in which year. I am trying to do what should be simple: plot a map showing year and maximum temperature by state. It is harder than it looks. Can any of you tell me how to do this?

State,Record High (°F),Year,Date,Location

Alabama,112,1925,"September 6, 1925",Centreville

Alaska,100,1915,"June 27, 1915",Fort Yukon

Arizona,128,1994,"June 29, 1994",Lake Havasu City

Arkansas,120,1936,"August 10, 1936",Ozark

California,134,1913,"July 10, 1913",Greenland Ranch (Death Valley)

Colorado,115,2019,"July 20, 2019",John Martin Reservoir

Connecticut,106,1995,"July 15, 1995",Danbury

Delaware,110,1930,"July 21, 1930",Millsboro

District of Columbia,106,1930,"July 20, 1930",Washington

Florida,109,1931,"June 29, 1931",Monticello

Georgia,112,1983,"August 20, 1983",Greenville

Hawaii,100,1931,"April 27, 1931",Pahala

Idaho,118,1934,"July 28, 1934",Orofino

Illinois,117,1954,"July 14, 1954",East Saint Louis

Indiana,116,1936,"July 14, 1936",Collegeville

Iowa,118,1934,"July 20, 1934",Keokuk

Kansas,121,1936,"July 24, 1936",Alton

Kentucky,116,1930,"July 28, 1930",Louisville

Louisiana,114,1936,"August 10, 1936",Plain Dealing

Maine,105,1911,"July 10, 1911",North Bridgton

Maryland,109,1988,"June 21, 1988",Conowingo Dam & Darlington

Massachusetts,107,1975,"August 2, 1975",New Bedford

Michigan,112,1936,"July 13, 1936",Mio

Minnesota,115,1917,"July 29, 1917",Beardsley

Mississippi,115,1930,"July 29, 1930",Holly Springs

Missouri,118,1954,"July 14, 1954",Warsaw

Montana,117,1937,"July 5, 1937",Medicine Lake

Nebraska,118,1936,"July 24, 1936",Minden

Nevada,125,1994,"June 29, 1994",Laughlin

New Hampshire,106,1911,"July 4, 1911",Nashua

New Jersey,110,1936,"July 10, 1936",Runyon

New Mexico,122,1994,"June 27, 1994",Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

New York,108,1926,"July 22, 1926",Troy

North Carolina,110,1983,"August 21, 1983",Fayetteville

North Dakota,121,1936,"July 6, 1936",Steele

Ohio,113,1934,"July 21, 1934",Gallipolis

Oklahoma,120,1994,"June 27, 1994",Tipton

Oregon,119,2021,"June 29, 2021",Pelton Dam

Pennsylvania,111,1936,"July 10, 1936",Phoenixville

Rhode Island,104,1975,"August 2, 1975",Providence

South Carolina,113,2012,"June 29, 2012",Columbia

South Dakota,120,2006,"July 15, 2006",Fort Pierre

Tennessee,113,1930,"August 9, 1930",Perryville

Texas,120,1994,"June 28, 1994",Monahans

Utah,117,2021,"July 10, 2021",St. George

Vermont,105,1911,"July 4, 1911",Vernon

Virginia,110,1954,"July 15, 1954",Balcony Falls

Washington,120,2021,"June 29, 2021",Hanford Site

West Virginia,112,1936,"July 10, 1936",Martinsburg

Wisconsin,114,1936,"July 13, 1936",Wisconsin Dells

Wyoming,115,1988,"July 15, 1988",Diversion Dam

Germany: Mass Murder

 6/29/26 DW:

A shooting in the northern German city of Stade left several people dead on Monday, according to local police.

Police initially reported a death toll of five adults, but later on Monday said it has risen to six. Five people died at the scene, while the sixth died in the hospital due to injuries sustained during the shooting, police said in a statement.

.

Balancing Checkbooks

After my stroke in 2014, I was in the hospital for three months, so I was not balancing the checkbook. My wife took over that disagreeable task. I just focus on large scale finance now.

Those of you too young to remember dial phones, or even corded phones, may not know what a pain balancing checkbooks was. You had no way to go online and see which checks had recently cleared. You got a monthly statement showing which checks had cleared as of several week ago, and which deposits you had made. Then you marked in your checkbook register which checks and deposits were on the statement. Then take the balance from the statement, add any deposits not yet cleared, subtract outstanding checks and see if you were lucky enough to have it match what your register claimed.  If not, check every arithmetic operstion in the register, verify that you recorded the amounts correctly, and you did not fsil to record a check.  If the register went from check 2948 to check 2950, hmmm...

This was before ATMs and similar paperless transactions. You have no idea how impressed a young lady in my car was about 1978 when I said, "Let me get some cash out of the bank," at 7:30 PM. 

Yea, a rare date.  I was adequately good looking, well-paid and too polite (or clueless) to recognize an opportunity.  I had a young lady out to dinner. She invited me to her place where she changed into "something more comfortable" a not very sexy nightgown.  She had me lay down on her waterbed to see what it was like and she hovered over me and in retrospect waited for me to take the hint. 

I was not a bad boy who mistreated women by treating them as casual sex objects, so I was pretty much free of second dates until I met my wife at a Bible study 

A girlfriend (yes, mentally ill, hence a second date, the result of a double blind date: blind date arranged by a blind girl).  She had a checking account that always had overdrafts and not for the reason satirized in a bumper sticker of the time: "I can't be overdrawn.  I still have checks left." Many (most? all?) checking accounts of the time charged a per check transaction fee. Hers was $0.35 per check.  She did not know this. 

Once enough of the charges accumulated to take her to 0, every check, no matter how small, caused another overdraft. Once I explained this mystery, her problems, at least her accounting problems, were solved. 

So, how do young people balance checkbooks? (My son does not even have a checking account; possession of a checking account used to be a sign of adulthood.) Nothing like the old days I am sure. My wife balances the old-fashioned zway with the advantage that she can see which checks have recently cleared rather than rely on a three week old statement. It strikes me that there must be a way to do this that is less cumbersome.

I envision what I call the top-off method for very rich people.  You put $100,000 in checking; when your current balance gets below $20,000 you transfer money to get it back to $100,000. 

Advantage: no need to balance checkbook or keep a register. Disadvantages: you have no idea if someone has figured out how to loot your account except regularly reading the transaction history; the difference in interest rate on checking and your investments means you are forgoing some income. But once you have 3-4 million dollars, the difference is less than $50,000 per month.

Can anyone think of a more clever name than top-off checking?

Not Like He Did Something Bad

7/1/26 BBC News:

 Government ministers have said officials are "exploring every option" to have the leader of a Rochdale grooming gang deported.

Shabir Ahmed was jailed for 22 years in August 2012, but his victims were this week told he was set to be released from prison on licence today.

They were also informed, despite earlier promises, that a 55-year-old law barred the government from deporting him.

The good news is that this guy is such an embarrassment to the groomer gang/Islamophile Industrial Complex that he needs to go, and Parliament is looking for some way to do so. 

Remember What Party Hates Trump More Than Child Rapers

7/2/26 Daily Mail:

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has pardoned an illegal immigrant who was convicted of raping a ten-year-old child to stop him from being deported. 

The Democrat was part of a three-person panel that granted clemency to Tou Lue Vang, 42, who was set to be sent back to Laos due to his horrific child sex crimes. 

Vang admitted to repeatedly sexually abusing the child for four years when he pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2006, and at the time he justified his actions by claiming it is a 'cultural thing' to 'marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.' 

His plea deal allowed him to avoid jail time but face deportation, a fate he has now been spared by Walz and the other two members of the panel, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota's Chief Supreme Court Justice, Natalie Hudson.

This is the party that with no evidence claims Trump is a pedophile but helps keep a guy who makes excuses for raping a 10-year-old in the U.S  You also notice that justifying raping a child got him no jail time in 2006.

Our Caldwell House is Under Contract

Our realtor managed to sell our daughter's house in six days and our house in six days, and on the seventh day, Danielle rested. 

UPDATE: The buyers withdrew. Apparently this is a recurring pattern. There is a period of time after signing contract to put down earnest money and they reached that point. A couple realtors that I know have a problem with people who spend lots of time looking at houses they have either ability or interest buying because it is so much fun! Shopping for houses for me is better than filling a cavity but not by much 

House Hunting

The first day was a mixture of houses that were sad (enough unrepaired water damage to show that someone had stopped repairing the obvious problems; to make you wonder about the subtle problems) or reminders that a 1960s houae needs renovation of fixtures to not look like it is looking for a place in James Lilek's Interior Desecrations.

 Some houses were beautiful but failed to meet our needs: 2 car garage with no way to easily build a detached garage (for shop and telescope storage) slopes so severe that building a dog run would be hard. Houses with pools and no other yard.

My First Thought Was: Wiccan Store?

After analysis, this is even more disturbing. 

That seems to be a demonic hot dog.

Someone Had Way Too Much Fun Writing This Label

Reparations

6/29/26 Tilting at Windmills discusses the current demands by Africa for slave reparations from Europe and America. The transatlantic slave trade is "the greatest crime against humanity" unlike the longer and larger transondian slave trade.

As most of you know, slaves were usually sold by Africans to Arabs and Europeans. This had severe bad effects on Africa. Largely agricultural societies were militarized to take prisoners of war for sale.  Much of this wealth was spent on repeating the process and buying alcohol, tools, and cloth. At the end, African slave traders exported several generations of workers in prime working years and failed to sensibly invest the capital. 

In England, some of the wealth from the slave trade was sensibly invested. Thomas Sowell says the role this had in capitalizing the Indistrial Revolution had been greatly exaggerated.  Over the years, I have seen many docum5 about Georgian building by slave owners that absurd vanity project:  capital wasted. It made England no better off.

In America, much of the wealth was sensibly invested. Lots of that invested capital was destroyed during the Civil War. Is that unfortunate? Yes but that wealth that Africa wants is just as gone as that which the slave traders wasted.

Stop whining and ask why a continent awash in natural resources remains poor today.

I Promise to Get Back to Current Events and History Soon (Fireflies As Light Pollution)

This relocation is just burning up all my time and energy. We have an offer on the house in Idaho. While not as much as we had originally hoped, it is sufficient to pay for the Tennessee house, the staircase rebuilds, adding a small staircase for the dogs from back porch to back yard, and a split A/C for the shop.

We drove up there last night about 11 PM to do s sky survey. Adding to the difficulty was a Full Moon and some high cirrys clouds. While not as dark as the house we had in Horseshoe Bend, it is better than what i have now. Beta and Gamma Lyrae, both magnitude 3 5 stars, were easy to see and Delta Lyrae, magnitude 4, was visible with averted vision. Polsris, magnitude 2, of course was plainly visible. I expect without the planet's most annoying nightlight I will see magnitude 4 and 5 stars easily. 

There are streetlights in the area but they are at least 100 feet below us and hidden by our front forest. The biggest light pollution problem seems to be fireflies. This is somewhat magical to us, still.

We Close on New House Aug. 12th

Now organizing movers.

Tennessee

This is my fourth visit to Tennessee.  My first was a 1980 corporate trip to support introduction of the GenRad/Futuredata in-circuit emulator product. This was a product well ahead of its time. Some day, I will engage in archaeoengineering that will fill all your nerd requirements for the year by telling you about it. I barely remember thst trip except getting Salisbury Steak dinner on ceramic plates with metal utensils on an airliner. I was fortunately not in the smoking section. (At the dawn of time: the pilot wore a leopard-skin loincloth.

The word pilotess would have been incomprehensible and unneeded.)

My second trip was to speak at Lincoln Memorial University School of Law. I think it was in the 2000s. I no longer remember what my presentation was about.  I met Dr. John Lott at this event. 

My third trip was to look around last year in preparation for considering the move with our daughter. 

This is my fourth trip and the first as summer hits.  What a summer! The positives:

1. People are friendly and polite.  Only a couple of drivers that make me say, "Go back to Los Angeles!"

2. Everything is so green here. Northern Idaho is like this, too. But the Boise area is completely brown right now except where irrigation has corrected the problem. That picture i took yesterday from what I hope will be my backyard really shows what the adjective verdant means.

4. Gasoline runs from $3.13 to $3.28 per gallon depending on location. 

Downsides:

1. Hot and humid. Between May and September, I expect my daytime will either be indoors, in a car, or in my pool. Of course, right now in the Boise area, the situation is just about as bad. It is dryer but temperatures often exceed 100 degrees.  Misery is similar.

2. Houses are different here. Most houses here have small windows.  Even though electricity seems similar in price (loss of hydroelectric) they build as though every kilowatt is being rationed like your life depends on it. I think it is because they are generally poorer here.

3. Houses are often built with a colonial facade but interiors are quite similar.  Lots of basements. Idaho has them also but not so abundantly.  Partly this is using earth cooling. Partly this is hoping thr rare tornadoes will let you survive even without a purpose-built tornado shelter.  The basement in the new house could be retrofitted into a combination fallout and tornado shelter will a lot of cinder blocks and some concrete. It has a toilet, sink, and shower. It could be turned into an expedient fallout shelter in a few hours, I think, but we are downwind of Oak Ridge National Laboratory so probably not very useful. 

4. Those basements come with staircases that range from worrying to terrifying. They are narrow, steep, and in some cases there is nothing to prevrnt you from falling out on to the floor. Many of these would not be up to code if built today, but most building codes grandfather them in. If inspection report does not screech about these, we will spend the money to retrofit something safer.  

5. The existing staircase has the correct run/rise ratio.  Rebuild so the steps are less steep and end in a landing followed by a 180 degree turn and more steps to the bottom. Add studs from joists to floor on which sheet rock goes and another banister.  It will be a little claustrophobic but less scary and safer, especially for the dogs. 

Today's Tragically Bad Phishing Email

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY


1500 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20220
TELEPHONE: +1(202)256-4380


COMPLIMENT OF THE DAY, OUR DEAR ELIGIBLE CUSTOMER
FIRST OF ALL, WE ARE VERY SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE OF THIS LETTER. IN CASE YOU ARE ALIVE, PLEASE WE NEED CONFIRMATION! NOW TO START WITH, I'M MR. SCOTT BESSENT, THE NEWLY APPOINTED UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SO, I AM DUE RESPECT AND HUMBLED TO WRITE YOU THIS VERY E-MAIL FOR WE TO KNOW THE FACT OF ALL THIS INFORMATION AS IT SOUND SO BITTER TO OUR EAR WHEN WE HEARD ABOUT THIS UGLY NEWS THAT YOU HAD A TERRIBLE DISEASE ACCIDENT CALLED (CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE) THAT LEAD YOU TO DEATH, THAT IS THE CAUSE YOU'RE SILENT SINCE. OF THE TREASURY

Is there any better sign of not mastering English?

Worst Hotel Stay of My Life (I Am 69)

Red Roof Inn Kingsport, Tennessee. When we arrived, rhe front desk was unmanned. Ten minutes later, the clerk arrived. He gave the same excuse for the empty pool that he gave my daughter two weeks before: "Severe weather." This might explain closing the pool but not the absence of water.

In the morning, my wife attempted shower. It would not start. While attempting to get it going, the faucet came out of the wall. She tried to clean up water on floor. It became obvious the floor had not been cleaned in sometime. 

I went to front desk to check out and get a refund for subsequent days. My wife had checked us in so I had missed the warning signs that something was amiss. 

One sign said rhat they would not rent to anyone who lived in a 60 mile radius.  This suggests that drug dealers, prostitutes, and people whose money ran out before their month did were trying to live here. The other emphasized that you could not stay there on a promise to pay. When we arrived, I had heard a rather angry argument a few doors down.

While waiting for rhe desk clerk, the guy aheadv of me complained th as soon as it started raining, water came through the ceiling. The clerk gave me the phone number for Expedia to arrange a refund.  We had made the reservations through Hotels.com. We had not prepaid.  Expedia tried to talk sense into the clerk who could only say his manager would be in on Monday.

Fortunately we ended up in a lovely Hampton Inn the next night.

UPDATE: I called back to Red Leaking Roof this morning.  Again, they refused to refund the unused nights. I called corporate.  Still waiting for a response. 

UPDATE 2: Never again with Red Roof or hotels.com.Red Roof corporate wanted proof that I stayed in another hotel. They also insisted that Expedia cancel the reservation first. Hotels.com needs an itinerary number to talk to a human. I do not have that in front of me.

UPDATE 4: Hotels.com canceled the reservation and the hotel from hell promised a refund for the unused nights. (The real test will be of refund comes through. Always use credit card for dealing with organizations of uncertain trustworthiness.) 

Hotels.com made this harder than needed but did come through.  Red Roof Inn, about whom I used to have a pretty high opinion, is now on my below Motel 6/random roach motel list.

UPDATE 6: Email from Red Roof Inn Kingsport promising refund soon.

I Think We Found Our New House

Sufficiently close to Kingsport to be on city water but in forested mountains.  The driveway is steep enough that we will probably uaes ice tires in winter. It is about an acre with a 36' x 18'  salt-water system pool. It has an 20' x 30' shop.with a garage door leading out to an adequately wide enough expanse of sky. Other parts of the property are forested. I may need to pour a level concrete driveway for the telescopes.

It is fully fenced for the dogs. 

It is nominally 2671 sq. ft.; a little small. It has a substantial partially finished basement with a bathroom but no windows. While the staircase down to this part is scary enough that we will probably hire an engineer to design a less scary staircase (turn in half on way down losing a small amount of room), that can wait for old house to sell. The basement connects to the garage which has a less worrisome staircase.  We will add banisters to the left side on both staircases also. It looks like a two car garage but one bay is so deep that two cars will fit head to tail. $489,000.

There are lots of houses for sale here. Many are impressively beautiful in a ostentatious way like my current house but too many staircases for us to enjoy.

Some are just weird. This house had the most impressive view:

Unfortunately, it was on a cliff. It was mildly scary looking down. The oartially finished basement had a 15' ceiling. It was bigger than some houses we have owned. There were doors leading to sections that were not even quite at the partially finished stage. $620,000 for a showpiece where our dogs would not have a yard.

$3.19/Gallon Gasoline

Tennessee must be close to refineries. 

At Some Point, I Hope to Get Rich Enough to Stop Flying Commercial

I hate flying in a cattle car.  Charter only. Probably at the $5 million invested level.

One Way RV Rental

My wife and i have toyed with the idea of renting a small motor home for our cross-country trip with deranged doggies. While there are one-way rentals available, they are from high-demand cities to others in the same category: Los Angeles to Chicago, etc. 

Do any small towable trailers have bed, stove, and toilet? The attraction of bringing home with us is the prospect of trying to get our dogs to not bark in our hotel rooms.

Another News Story You Will Not See in Lamestream Media

6/25/26 Free Press reports on Trump’s deputy director of the Bureau of Prisons, a former inmate Trump patdoned during his first term. (Another beneficiary now runs the pardons office at the White House.) Behind a paywall; open a private tab.

John Smith (yes, really) found God in prison and used being in a white collar prison to learn about finance and credit. This happens a lot. One of my nephews did likewise and now is a successful businessman in Portland. 

Among the interesting facts is that federal inmate population is falling under Trump as he attempts to right the wrongs of Biden's superpredator crime bill.

Be Glad You Are Not European

 PJMedia:

The region is suffering a record-breaking, early-summer heat wave with temperatures soaring as high as 40–44°C, the way the French reckon it, or 104–111°F in actual degrees. This is when Americans would set the thermostat to 68° (actual degrees) or maybe go see a movie at a theater where they keep it that temp all the time.

But at the École Primaire La Planette school in Nîmes, they have no air conditioning — naturellement — and according to Miss Jo on X and other sources, a child there "recently fainted because of the heat," even while "classes were being taught in corridors to get out of the heat."

Parents of the students there did what parents in America would almost certainly do in a similar situation, and they raised money to buy five portable air conditioning units for the school. The community got so involved that the parents needed just three days to raise the required €2,000.

So far, so good.

But Mayor Vincent Bouget is an actual member of the Parti communiste français (PCF), and if there's one thing Communists can't stand, it's the community doing stuff. Bouget ordered the school to remove the A/C because "it sets a precedent," and "in some neighborhoods, parents don’t have the means to act."

 Over on X, snippy French response was thst Americans can't complain about this because we have a mass murder problem in our schools. But mass murder in schools in a problem in several European nations at higher rates per 1000,000 people as is mass murder  

Temporary Protected Status is Temporary

Mullin v. Doe (2026) ruled that the Administration has authority to end TPS as, in their opinion is warranted by changes in the conditions that justified TPS for those nations. TPS for Haitians started in 2010 because of the eathquake. It is no longer 2010. Syrian TPS is from 2012 when the Assad regime's brutal oppression and murders. Millions of Syrians have since returned home.

The TPS law also says that non-constitutional questions about TPS and the President's authority to grant TPS are not subject to judicial review. Clear enough? 

Supreme Court Pounded a Stake Through the Vampire Rule

Wolford v. Lopez (2026) footnote 3 cited some of my published work. Hawaii's law that prohibited concealed weapon licensees from entering a business without express permission of the owner violates the Second Amendment.  Other states with similar rules are going to have to come up with some other way to discourage licensees from carrying. Perhaps requiring them to wear a yellow emblem of a gun on their clothes.

Also nice, a congratulations email from a DOJ official.

The Blazing World

One of the nice things about a detailed narrative history like this is how many ideas sloppily or simplified elsewhere get clarified. I have read descriptions of the Glorious Revolution that describe King James II Revolution the Great Seal of England into the Thames before boarding a ship to the continent. Also impulse in some references is that Parliament requested William of Orange come over and replace James in a peaceful and bloodless coup. Both of these seemed dramatic enough to make me skeptical.  The Blazing World corrected my understanding.  James did indeed throw the Great Seal of England into the Thames but some days before he escaped custody of William's forces and slipped out of the country.  Parliament did not invite William to take the throne, followed by a peaceful entry. William and a small army landed on the Kentish coast and marched to London.

If you are need of knowledge of this pivotal set of events that leads to our Revolution, Healey's book is detailed and interesting. 

Antifa Does Not Exist and Just Got 30+ Year Sentences

6/13/26 DOJ press release lists a dozen Antifa members sentenced to terms of 100, 70, 50, and 30 years.

Chief Judge O’ Connor said, “The defendants’ violence and terrorism is an assault on Democracy. The defendants’ planning, staging, and execution of the attack led to the attempted murder of an officer who ironically is not even involved in enforcing immigration law.” 

Danger to democracy. Got that Biden. Your boys are the threat   

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

6/10/26 Philadelphia Inquirer writes about grade inflation in Philadelphia schools. Teachers are upset because students who aeldom show up for classes are passing. 

A fourth teacher who has worked in multiple types of schools in Philadelphia said the practice is not limited to the district.

She most recently taught at a city charter and said some of her middle-grades students were at kindergarten reading and math levels.

A combination of administration pressure to raise grades and sometimes administrators just altering the grades to a passing level means kids are moving up through the grades without acquiring the necessary skills or learning important life lessons, like showing up for classes.

I had my suspicions ad to what is driving this confirmed deeper in the article:

“The gap was huge,” the fourth teacher said. “The school’s explanation is that there’s a school-to-prison pipeline, and the older students are, the less likely they are to graduate. But they’re not meeting standards. The gaps are huge. It was very shocking to me how they would just pass the kids. I’m a parent, and I want my kids to be prepared properly.”

Everyone knows this whole "school-to-prison pipeline" idea was predicated on high discipline rates for black and Hispanic boys.  That failure to learn self-discipline mostly prepares them for criminal behavior could not possibly be part of the pipeline, could it? This insistence on meeting standards of benefit is racist leads to unprepared kids going to at worst jail.